Peter Forrest — who, as P. Fluid, was lead singer and frontman of the pioneering Black rock band 24/7 Spyz — has died at the age of 64. On Jan. 14th, Forrest’s body was found badly beaten in the back of an abandoned ambulette bus in the Bronx. Forrest, who worked for the ambulette company as a driver, reportedly suffered “trauma around the body.” The New York Police Department confirmed the death to Rolling Stone, adding that the incident “is now being investigated as a homicide.”
Starting in the Eighties, 24/7 Spyz was part of a wave of bands determined to prove that Black musicians should not be restricted to hip-hop and R&B. The movement led to an organization, the Black Rock Coalition, and came to encompass Living Colour, Fishbone, 24/7 Spyz, and many others.
On their first two albums, 1989’s Harder Than You and 1990’s Gumbo Millennium, the Spyz merged hardcore, metal and funk; their biggest hit was a remake of Kool and the Gang’s “Jungle Boogie.” P. Fluid, the band’s first lead singer, was equally intense in both his stage moves and vocal style, which blended genres and would influence later rap-rockers. “He brought a sense of reckless abandon, but in a fun way,” says 24/7 Spyz guitarist Jimi Hazel. “He was climbing on the rafters. When he wanted to sing, he could sing. But he got more into screaming and shouting.” In that regard, Hazel says, P. Fluid was on the same level with original Faith No More frontman Chuck Mosley and Fishbone’s Angelo Moore. “Those guys,” says Hazel, “set the template for what came next.”
Unfortunately, tension between Forrest and the other members of 24/7 Spyz grew while they were making their second album. According to Hazel, Forrest felt their label should focus on Forrest’s politically minded songs. During the band’s 1990 tour with Jane’s Addiction, Forrest announced, onstage and to the shock of his bandmates, that he was leaving the band.
24/7 Spyz continued without Forrest; a version of the band, featuring founders Hazel and bassist Rick Skatore, continues to this day. But Forrest’s post-Spyz career was spottier and more sporadic. After his time in Spyz, he formed his own short-lived band, P. Fluid Foundation, then briefly reunited with his former band for 1995’s Temporarily Disconnected. In 2008, he started a side project, AFC, with Living Colour’s Corey Glover and Angelo Moore, but the group only released one single, “Election Day.”
In the mid-2010s, Forrest, now calling himself Forrest P. Thinner, resurfaced yet again with a goth band, BlkVampires, in which he sported white makeup. “I always had the idea of a BlkVampires concept long before the Blade film came out!” Forrest said in 2018. “Chris Lee and Peter Cushing were the best! … Man you don’t have enough time for me to my mind in horror. We BlkVampires really haven’t even touch the surface of the influence that I would like.”
“What an interesting dude,” says Hazel of his quixotic former bandmate. “I’m grateful to him because if we had not met up on the street in 1986, 24/7 Spyz would not have happened. You either loved him or hated him, but if you loved him, you loved him unconditionally. He was a motherfucker, but he was a good motherfucker.”